The Ballad of Black Tom

Tommy is relieved to return to Harlem after his terrifying night at Suydam’s mansion. Feeling safe again, he rethinks Suydam’s offer not only to play at his gathering, but to aid him in resurrecting the Sleeping King.

Tommy returns home to find police cruisers and barricades surrounding his apartment building. Detective Malone informs Tommy that his father is dead. Mr. Howard shot Tommy’s father while searching the apartment for the stolen page, thinking he posed a threat. Tommy is numb as Malone and Howard relay the details, but Howard attributes Tommy’s lack of an emotional response to a racialized biological deficiency: “[T]hese people really don’t have the same connections to each other as we do. That’s been scientifically proven” (61), Howard says. Ironically, this comment and the overkill of Tommy’s father, who was not holding a rifle but a guitar, show the complete lack of empathy that Howard and the other officers feel toward their fellow human beings due to their racist beliefs.

As Tommy imagines his father’s last moments, he realizes that the Sleeping King’s annihilation of mankind is preferable to the systematic killing and policing of his people by a racist society: “What is indifference compared to malice?” (66).